At 12:54 PM 7/12/01 +1300, Frank March wrote:
Under the Privacy Act, anyone is entitled to ask for information held about them on a database (a Web site qualifies as such under the Act IIRC) to be corrected or amended, or deleted should the information no longer have any purpose in being stored.
[snip] Nice argument, except for the fact that the list archives are *archives* not a database. If the law considers any website regardless of content as automatically being a database, then the law is stupid and in need of changing. Is an old newspaper considered a database just because it might have information on people? (no, its an archive) no difference here. The list archives are just an automated, electronic version of what librarians have been doing with newspapers for years - archiving articles for future record. If somebody libels you in a newspaper article, can you go around telling all the librarians in the country to cut that page out of their archive version of the newspaper ? I think not. Get a retraction printed in a future edition, yes. I don't see a difference here. Just because technology makes it *possible* to do revisionist censorship of archives doesn't mean we should...and yes, I think Joe Ableys idea is a good one :) Regards, Simon - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog